Viewing Any Saved Wireless Password in Windows 8.1

If you have been looking for an easy way to see your saved wireless passwords on a Windows 8.1 machine, you may believe you are out of luck. While it's not the approach you might expect, there is a method you can use to view these passwords.

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Windows 7 had a useful Manage Wireless Networks utility that displayed saved passwords for every network to which you are configured to connect automatically. Unlike Windows 8.1, which only displays the password for the current connection (as explained in the article “Viewing Current Wireless Network Password in Windows 8.1), it didn’t matter if you were currently connected to the network or not. You can, however, obtain the same results by using the Command Prompt to enter textual commands.

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1. Right-click the Windows icon and select Command Prompt. Alternatively, search for and select Command Prompt from the Windows search screen or enter cmd in the Run dialog.

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2. Type the following command at the prompt and press Enter:

netsh wlan show profiles

This command displays a list of profiles configured on your computer and helps you locate the exact profile name needed in the next step.

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3. Type the following command at the prompt and press Enter:

netsh wlan show profile name=”ProfileName” key=clear

Replace ProfileName with the profile name you found earlier, but keep the surrounding quotation marks. Look for the password next to Key Content in the Security Settings section.

Note: You can delete unwanted profiles by entering the following command at the prompt: